djracodex wrote:I tried my first campaign on PW. Splurged on the 0.20, 6am - 10pm for pages with around 2k views a day (not sure really what I was doing, but here goes nothing!). Been going for 4 days now (yeah, burnt out my funds Real Quick), but holy shit! It was really successful! Someone even commented on my chat box! Whocares wrote "honestly, this comic is pretty much ****, waste of bandwidth" and all I can think is This has worked really well, I hope at least 1% will return

dj 1. I love you and 2. magically your gif didn't start playing until i had finished reading the text you had written before it.

I tried out StumbleUpon's Paid Discovery system, and I'm not really impressed by it. After the initial excitement died down (Holy shit, that many clicks in just 5 minutes?!) I noticed that they weren't actually reading the comic, despite my campaign having a score of above 65% which is considered "doing well" by StumbleUpon. (Totally not true in my opinion)

Humbug wrote:I tried out StumbleUpon's Paid Discovery system, and I'm not really impressed by it. After the initial excitement died down (Holy shit, that many clicks in just 5 minutes?!) I noticed that they weren't actually reading the comic, despite my campaign having a score of above 65% which is considered "doing well" by StumbleUpon. (Totally not true in my opinion)

So now that my StumbleUpon campaign is over, here's a more detailed overview. Over 500 clicks to the landing page and it looks like only a handful (or none at all) actually bothered to check out the first page. I got as much traffic from Questionable Content through Project Wonderful, and up to 50% of that number actually browsed through the comic.

The option to pay only for engaged readers is absolute bullshit. I found out that a reader is "engaged" if they spend 5 seconds on a page. According to Google Analytics, the average time spent on my pages is 20 seconds, and that does not mean they are actually flipping through the comic, so a 5 second visit can still count as a bounce.

I think Cuddly is right when she said that Stumbleupon is meant for one-shots, it might be great for gag comics, but is totally a waste for story-driven ones, at least for me. Better to spend your money elsewhere.

Humbug wrote:So now that my StumbleUpon campaign is over, here's a more detailed overview. Over 500 clicks to the landing page and it looks like only a handful (or none at all) actually bothered to check out the first page. I got as much traffic from Questionable Content through Project Wonderful, and up to 50% of that number actually browsed through the comic.

The option to pay only for engaged readers is absolute bullshit. I found out that a reader is "engaged" if they spend 5 seconds on a page. According to Google Analytics, the average time spent on my pages is 20 seconds, and that does not mean they are actually flipping through the comic, so a 5 second visit can still count as a bounce.

I think Cuddly is right when she said that Stumbleupon is meant for one-shots, it might be great for gag comics, but is totally a waste for story-driven ones, at least for me. Better to spend your money elsewhere.

Either that or create an especially dumbed down page for the stumbleupons. Just one story page isn't keeping their interest. Maybe I'll experiment again, but right now I'm moving on to different avenues.

So, I have a ProjectWonderful question. It's one of those things where, I *get* that it makes sense, I just don't really get the mechanism *why* it makes sense because I'm bad at math.Now, it might just be because my comic is relatively low-views and therefore not a top priority in terms of other people's spending- but what's the reason it's so easy to spend a lot of money on PW while making very, very little?* On a *great* day I make one or two cents, but back when I was actually advertising on other people's sites, it was difficult to spend that little and actually get my ad up anywhere (even on the cheapest sites). It just seems like a really big disparity and I just want to, for my own peace of mind, be able to understand why that disparity exists. Besides my own lack of views/perceived adspace value (unless that IS the sole contributor, in which case, okeydokey)

*I'm not even saying those days where you go whole hog and say "I'm gonna advertise on Superpopular/Decentlypopular Comic today! Time to spend a whole dollar!" I'm even just talking about when you run a low-expense campaign. I dunno. Maybe this is a stupid question.

VeryCuddlyCornpone wrote:but what's the reason it's so easy to spend a lot of money on PW while making very, very little?

Because it's fun to get clicks.

For most people, I would consider getting money from PW ads to be like finding a penny on the ground at a store. Having a PW ad on your site is the equivalent of stopping to pick up the penny, while not running a PW ad is like ignoring the penny.

IVstudios wrote:Well, I assume PW takes a cut of the bids, so if someone is bidding ¢2 on an ad on your site, you probably aren't getting the full ¢2.

That's true. When you spend $5.00 on PW, you're basically buying 500 "Project Wonderful Pennyz" that are valued at $4.50. Project Wonderful keeps the extra $0.50 as their fee for using their service. You also can't "cash out" unless you have at least 1,000 "Pennyz" in your account.

"Seems like the only comics that would be good to this person are super action crazy lines, mega poses!"

I made a tl;dr version of this thread. The blog version will be prettier 'cause it has HTML tables.=======================================================================

I experimented with paid advertising last year by trying out automated and manual bidding on Project Wonderful. I took detailed notes on the different methods I tried, which I've summarized here in a post that should be useful if you're unfamiliar with how to use Project Wonderful effectively.

Clicks

Expense

Cost-per-click

Leaderboard (728x90)

301

$5.66

$0.019

Half Banner (234x60)

193

$5.26

$0.027

Skyscraper (160x600)

167

$4.77

$0.029

Button (117x30)

371

$11.39

$0.031

Rectangle (300x250)

21

$1.20

$0.057

Square (125x125)

10

$0.65

$0.065

Leaderboard ads are the most effective because their horizontal shape allows creators to easily fit them directly above or below the comic page, maximizing their visibility. Half banners and skyscrapers are similarly convenient, increasing the likelihood that they'll catch readers' attention at the top of the screen. Button ads, while tiny, often come in groups of four or more, making it relatively easy to place inexpensive bids on high-traffic sites. Rectangle and square ads should be avoided, as their blockiness makes it difficult for creators to place them in visible areas, and squares in particular are generally way overpriced compared to the half banner ads, which are only a little smaller. There's also an option to use Banner ads (468x60), which are basically miniature Leaderboard ads, but I tried them later on and found that the Leaderboard ads got better results.

Clicks

Expense

Cost-per-click

Canada

100

$2.34

$0.023

United States

598

$17.10

$0.029

Elsewhere

55

$1.79

$0.033

Europe

119

$3.95

$0.033

Canadian ad space is often surprisingly underpriced, offering a decent amount of page views while sometimes costing less than 1/10th of what the United States ad space costs. If you can get lucky and grab a high-traffic Canadian ad for a few pennies, you'll get a ton of value out of your bid. U.S. ads are still a good deal, though, since they get way more traffic than the other regions. You have to be cautious when bidding on U.S. ads, though, as while it's fun to quickly get a lot of clicks, it's also an easy way to blow through your budget faster than you expected. Elsewhere and European ads are similar to the Canadian ones and can sometimes have awesome deals, but in my experience they're less consistent than the Canadian ads, and you may end up wasting money on duds that only yield one or two clicks.

Clicks

Expense

Cost-per-click

Sunday

19

$0.63

$0.033

Thursday

17

$0.56

$0.033

Wednesday

25

$0.82

$0.033

Monday

19

$0.72

$0.038

Tuesday

21

$0.84

$0.040

Friday

15

$0.78

$0.052

Saturday

11

$0.72

$0.066

It seems that most people who read webcomics do so during downtime at school or work, so it makes sense that weekday ads would have the most value. Fridays and Saturdays are a waste of money, as readers are apparently too distracted by other things going on to care much about webcomics then. Sundays are surprisingly effective, though, and don't fit into this weekday-weekend dynamic for some reason. So, in order to get the most value for your money, it'd be smart to set your ads to run from Sunday through Thursday.

Here are more tips for how you can get the most out of your Project Wonderful experience.

Learn your demographics. A significant amount of this blog's traffic comes from France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other European countries, which suggests that bidding on European ad space is likely to attract readers that stick around after clicking on the ad. While I generally got a better cost-per-click ratio out of Canadian ads, those clicks don't seem to be turning into regular readers, which ultimately makes them less valuable. Google Analytics is one example of a tracking program you can use to get this kind of information just by adding a block of code to your site.

Blacklist bad sites. While analyzing some of my automated bids, I noticed that several high-traffic sites had an awful cost-per-click ratio of $0.35 or worse. I visited these sites, and I saw that in each case, the ad was located at the bottom of the site, way below where the comic page is. All Project Wonderful tracks is how many times a site's loaded in someone's browser, so it's possible for an ad to have a lot of page views even though nobody's actually viewing the ad. Fortunately, there's a "blacklist" option that lets you avoid bidding on certain sites, so if you're using automated bids, make sure to "blacklist" sites that have lousy ad placement.

Search by tags. When looking for ads to bid on, the "Site Description" menu has a field titled "Include tags:" that helps you narrow down your search. You'll get better results if you bid on webcomics that have a similar genre or style as you own, as readers who like the other webcomics are more likely to become a fan of yours as well. For example, if you make a dramatic fantasy webcomic, you can select "Comics: Webcomics" and search for "drama fantasy" and get a list of dramatic webcomics, fantasy webcomics, and webcomics that are both. If you aren't sure what tags to search for, there's a "tag cloud" link that shows a list of the most common tags.

Be patient. It's enjoyable to outbid someone and get a message informing you that you're the high bidder, but you may end up overpaying for an ad by doing so. Placing low bids and being patient will most likely get you more clicks in the long run than getting into a bidding war over premium ad space. There's no set time limit on bids, so as long as an ad doesn't have a minimum bid amount, you can place a permanent bid of as low as $0.01 and then wait for the price to eventually drop. Prices tend to fluctuate heavily, so an ad that's expensive today might be dirt-cheap next week. Also, ads that are $0.10 or cheaper generally have better value and are less risky since they have $0.01 bid increments rather than the $0.10 increments of the more expensive ads.

Stick with your best sites. I found that certain sites gave me good results every time I bid on them, and I was able to get better cost-per-click ratios by focusing more of my budget on these sites. Maybe other people happened to overlook these sites, or it's possible that they've experienced a sudden increase in traffic, or they could just have really ideal ad placement, but whatever the reason is, try to find your best sites as quickly as possible and stick with them. If one region works well, then you can try bidding on another region, and if the site has an another ad that's a different size, then bid on that ad as well. Focusing on several sites in this manner is a better strategy than spreading your budget out over a bunch of different sites and hoping that some of them end up being worthwhile.

Project Wonderful is a much more efficient way to promote your webcomic than its free alternatives, and while it can get expensive if you plan on bidding for space on the most popular webcomics, it only costs $5.00 to get started, and you can make your money last a while if you're careful with it.

"Seems like the only comics that would be good to this person are super action crazy lines, mega poses!"

Advertising, consistency, and quality are three strategies to getting more readers, but promotion's a screwy subject since advertising can get expensive, and consistently posting high-quality pages or strips requires a lot of time and work. There's a more efficient strategy, though, which is pandering. I'd probably trash someone's webcomic if they do it, but I'm not gonna say that a creator's wrong for valuing increasing their readership over pleasing critics. Anyways, if you choose to go this route, here's a list of some of the most popular forms of pandering.

LGBT: There's a new review site called Yes Homo that only covers LGBT webcomics, and there are a ton of them out there. There are also a lot of webcomic fans who specifically look for LGBT webcomics to read, either because they're LGBT themselves or because they're into yaoi. This one's really easy to do, because a creator can just add a token LGBT character, or have one of the existing straight characters come out. You can also help advertise this to potential readers by adding the letters "BL" (boy love) or some equivalent to your webcomic's banner, and you can make it extra clear by showing two people either kissing or about to kiss.

Furries: You can get your work promoted on The Belfry, FurAffinity, and WikiFur, and all you have to do is draw your characters as animals. There's a really dedicated furry community online, and they can't seem to get enough of this stuff. Like, Furry Experience is one of the most popular webcomics on Smack Jeeves despite being a mediocre religious comic, and all of its fans are furries who probably only checked it out because it has the word "Furry" in its title. And if you don't know how to draw animals, you can just add ears and tails and turn your characters into catboys and catgirls.

Fan-service: This one's harder since you do actually have to be skilled at drawing anatomy. Although, on the other hand, it makes the writing easier since you can just focus on showing T&A. You want to have a variety of body types and personalities so that everyone's tastes are catered to. If your art's good enough, you'll be creating fictional boyfriends/girlfriends for your readers to fantasize about, and that puts you in a great position since you're the one responsible for their "relationships." You can also make your webcomic X-rated if you want, although it's probably more lucrative to charge money for commissions instead. Another tip is that you can get ranked on Top Web Comics by using sexy drawings as voting incentives.

Fetishes: The idea's to cater to a really specific audience so that you don't have to compete with other webcomics for attention as much. This strategy probably yields a smaller readership than the others, but the fans you get are really dedicated and likely to support the webcomic. One example of this that comes to mind is the inflation webcomic Craving Control, which got fairly popular even though it's just drawings of a chick eating a lot and getting fat. (The Webcomic Relief has a video review of it here.) And you can always just post pages under an alias if you're concerned about getting labeled as "the weirdo who draws a fetish webcomic."

You can also combine multiple strategies, or even do all of them if you want your webcomic to be as popular as TwoKinds. And if you use paid advertising to broadcast your strategy, like putting a half-naked chick on a banner for a fan-service webcomic, then you'll be giving your webcomic a huge advantage over more conventional ones. Still, when pandering, it helps to be familiar with the fundamental aspects of making comics, as while you can mostly get away with half-assing it, your readers will still expect some level of competence.

"Seems like the only comics that would be good to this person are super action crazy lines, mega poses!"